1. Field of The Invention
This invention relates to the field of phallic devices, including prosthetic devices and dildos.
2. Prior Art
Phalluses (or phalli) have been used as penis substitutes from time immemorial. In cultures where hymenal blood was considered evil or dangerous, a husband would avoid his young bride until she attended a ceremony during which her hymen was pierced by a substitute for the husband, often a phallus made of stone, metal, ivory or even wood. In other cultures the deflowering of a young bride by the phallus of a fertility god was part of ceremonies aimed at assuring the procreative success of a married couple. Similar ceremonies were also participated in by long-married wives who were childless. See Panati's Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything and Everybody, Charles Panati (Harper & Row, New York, 1989).
In addition to serving in sacred fertility and marriage ceremonies, phalluses have been used for the simple purpose of pleasure, by couples and by people who are otherwise alone.
Even from earliest times phalluses have been made as simple as an ordinary smooth-edged cylinder, as close replicas of human penises, as reproductions of exaggerated erect penises, or as ornately decorated symbols of the male reproductive organ.
In more recent times, with the development of modern plastics and other moldable materials, phalluses may be mass produced in a wide variety of forms pleasing in shape and design for use as decorative sculptures, or as a device used in erotic activities.
With the onslaught of venereal diseases such as herpes and AIDS, phalluses substitute for the male reproductive organ as part of safe sex practices. Phalluses are also used by couples when the male partner is impotent. And, sex aids and paraphernalia, such as phalluses, have been used by sex counselors as part of the tools used to counsel their patients.
In order to allow users of phalluses to more closely simulate actual sex, harness and phallus combinations were developed so that one sex partner may wear the phallus and otherwise perform almost as if the phallus was the partner's own erect penis. The typical harness consisted of a trapezoidal or rectangular patch of inelastic clothlike material such as rubber or leather, with elastic straps attached to the corners of the patch. The patch measured approximately 3" by 4" and had a hole in its center through which the phallus was inserted. After the phallus was inserted through the hole of the patch, the harness was put on by the user by placing the elastic straps around the legs and/or waist. The phallus was made of substantially rigid plastic and was completely hollowed out to make room for the insertion of a male partner's real penis (and depending upon the size of the phallus, there would be room for either a flaccid or erect penis). The phallus was made hollow also to reduce the weight of the phallus so that it did not cause the elastic to stretch out. The back of the phallus was fitted with a flange extending outward from the circumference of the phallus, perpendicularly to the axis of the phallus. The flange would extend outward from about 0.5" to about 1.5" to prevent the phallus from slipping through the hold in the patch. (Some phalluses had the elastic straps attached directly to the phallus' flange, thereby eliminating the clothlike patch.) The phallus was held in place by the user's body pressing the harness patch against the phallus flange.
Another lesser used design was a three piece unit phallus, harness and a snap plate that works the same as the above except there are snaps to the front plate of the harness. Elastic or other straps fused in or snapped to the phallus base are also known.
These prior art devices have several drawbacks. Among them are the discomfort a user feels when wearing the harness, the tendency of the elastic to stretch too much during use so that the phallus and the wearer become misaligned, and the fact that the hole in the patch can only accommodate a narrow range of phallus diameters (i.e., a phallus with too large a diameter would not fit through the hole in the patch, and a phallus with too narrow a diameter would slip about in the patch).
In addition, the prior art harnesses would not work well with the more modern phalluses which are made of dense, resilient rubberlike material which more closely replicate the look and feel of erect real penises. That is because the weight of the phallus would be too great for the elastic straps, and during use of the harness and phallus during sex, the resilient phallus is likely to bend too much.